


can we finish what we started

by HearJessRoar



Series: Camp Bright Moon Interludes [3]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: F/M, an idiot returns to his home while the other idiot pretends she doesn't miss him more at 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:53:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25473424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HearJessRoar/pseuds/HearJessRoar
Summary: Summer is over and he's gone homeAnd she's fine.So is he.
Relationships: Mermista/Sea Hawk (She-Ra)
Series: Camp Bright Moon Interludes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1770541
Comments: 11
Kudos: 82





	can we finish what we started

He left his bandana behind.

Mermista stared at it, the innocent purple fabric hooked around the doorknob to her closet, resting there as easily as if he would be back at any minute to tie the thing back around his forehead.

He wouldn't.

Sea Hawk had left yesterday, and Mermista was _fine._

She was, okay.

It was totally cool that her boyfriend had to go home, all the way across four states in his janky little blue truck that backfired in the street and embarrassed her constantly when they were out and no, she did _not_ miss his shitty Scottsdale or him and his sheepish grin from across the cab when the engine cut and she definitely wasn't running that purple Camp Bright Moon bandana through her fingers.

Okay.

_Okay._

She missed him already, and wasn't that just pathetic?

Her tiny apartment felt so empty and quiet without his constant reassuring noise. He practically hummed with life, just by existing. It filled the nooks and crannies of her life with warmth and presence, which was about as far into being poetic as Mermista would allow herself to get.

And now her home was _hollow._

She gripped the fabric tightly. Not allowing herself to overthink it, she prised the knot apart and shook back her hair to place it properly, retying the knot on the crown of her head.

If Scorpia said anything about it, she’d just fire her, she decided.

~

Sea Hawk was desolate.

Miserable.

Melancholy.

A less romantic soul might even say he was sad.

Oh, he’d been back for a whole week, and nothing had changed from when he left. He was still couch surfing, relying on the dwindling hospitality of estranged friends, and he hated it. The apartment he had been looking at wouldn’t be available until two weeks out, and Falcon might very well toss him out on his ear before then, especially now that Sea Hawk had made it clear that their, _ahem,_ previous arrangement would no longer be an option.

He would never dream of betraying Mermista like that.

He sighed, and continued to scroll absently through job listings on his battered phone. His legs dangled off the tailgate and once upon a time he might have cared about looking roguish and debonair while he sat there in the Burger King parking lot. But there was no one here in this town he wanted to impress anymore, and the October air was just beginning to have a bit of a bite to it. He pulled his jacket closer to his chest, wondering if he still had the spare zipper he’d bought to fix it somewhere in the truck.

He slid down, aware that he was using this as a very convenient excuse to avoid thinking about job hunting, and yanked open the driver’s side door. (The passenger door was permanently locked from the outside, and besides, it wasn’t like he had many passengers these days to justify fixing it. Mermista hadn’t cared.) Leaning as far as he could without actually getting in the truck, he popped open the glovebox to check, and something sparkly clattered to the floormat. It chimed like metal.

Brows furrowing, he crawled all the way into the cab and blindly fumbled around the floorboard. His fingers brushed something cold and slim, and he grabbed for it.

Mermista’s hoops.

His heart clenched.

They rested so innocently in his palm, glinting in the sunlight filtering through his dusty windshield. Sea Hawk sat back heavily in his seat. The little gold earrings were hooked together, and he remembered the night she’d left them in the truck.

He had taken her stargazing, and she had complained the whole time. It had been cute, the way she had insisted that it was the corniest thing he could have ever come up with. But he had turned the bed of the truck into a veritable nest of blankets and pillows, and she had snuggled up under his arm and listened to him talk about how sailors used the stars to navigate the earth, and the waves of _contentment_ rolling off of her had been unmistakable.

At one point she had unhooked her earrings, annoyed that they kept pressing into her neck as she leaned on him, and climbed out to put them in the glovebox, where they had apparently remained for the last three months.

He missed her.

They had spoken last night, but he missed her.

She was always so _cool_ about her feelings, and when he called he always had this little voice in the back of his head that said that maybe he was more invested in this relationship than she was, and wouldn’t that just be a kick in the head?

But that wasn’t fair of him, he knew. Mermista had the exact opposite problem with feelings that he did; that is, she had a hard time expressing her emotions without getting embarrassed, and he had a hard time expressing his emotions in ways that wouldn’t embarrass people who actually had been born with a sense of shame.

They had made progress over the summer, with her being plenty more open with expressing her affection for him in public and around their friends. (Yes, _their_ friends, Mermista, don’t pretend you don’t like Bow.)

But over the phone it seemed like they’d been set back to square one. And Sea Hawk couldn’t lie, it had hurt his feelings quite a bit that she couldn’t seem to say things that she’d said freely to him in person.

It made him wonder-

His phone vibrated, startling him out of his reverie. He nearly dropped the earrings into the abyss of the bench seat, but managed to save them at the last second.

A Snapchat notification from Scorpia.

Sea Hawk grumbled, but he could never be mad at Scorpia, not when she was well, _Scorpia._ And she had no way of knowing that her timing was just _the worst._

He tapped open the little pink square and his breath caught in his chest.

Mermista, his Mermista, blurry and beautiful and not facing the camera. And something familiar about that headband holding her hair back-

“Hey, so she’s been wearing your bandana all week and it’s really cute and sad and she’s breaking my heart pls call her more.” read Scorpia’s desperate caption.

Well.

Maybe he’d been overthinking this.

Sea Hawk popped open the hoops and slid them into his ears, first one, then the other.

Was he an _idiot?_

Of _course_ Mermista had a hard time talking to him on the phone, she missed him! And missing him was _embarrassing_ because it was _sappy_ and _gross._ So she was trying not to let him know how much she missed him and in turn overdoing it like she always did when she was trying to hide her true feelings.

What was he, a total stranger to her? He knew her better than that.

He felt lighter, though his heart lurched at the thought of Mermista missing him. He couldn't bear the thought of his absence causing her pain, he really couldn't.

Fiddling with the hoop that now threaded through his ear, Sea Hawk toggled back to his job search.

And paused, thinking.

There were plenty of jobs back in Etheria.

He rolled the idea back and forth in his head, and dismissed it.

She would never be okay with that, and he wouldn't push her.

~

Not like she’d been counting, but Sea Hawk had officially been gone for a month and a half.

And yes, they texted almost constantly, but Mermista would rather die than be one of those codependent couples that had to be in contact at all times, so their phone calls had dwindled to once a week if that, which was _fine,_ it’s not like he’d gotten bored with her or anything.

She hoped.

It was _fine._

The December air hung thick with frost and while the lake hadn’t frozen over yet, there were chunks of brittle ice crusting around the shore and all the water fowl were long gone. It was a very grey, lonely sight.

But the owner ran the Shack all winter on the off chance some tourist family without any sense wanted a hotdog or a pretzel, and hey, Mermista wasn’t gonna argue with someone who paid her to do jack shit all day.

Realizing that the first time she’d thought about him in two days had been to remember how long he’d been gone, Mermista felt a pang of guilt. She missed him, she _did,_ and the bandana to prove it was in her bag at that moment.

But she had never had a long distance relationship before, and she couldn’t help feeling that they were doing it wrong, somehow.

And she felt _bad_ that everything that had become so easy for her to say to his face seemed impossible to say on the phone. She couldn’t see his face, and his face was such a wonderful distraction from the disgustingly sappy things her mouth was saying without her brain’s consent. And she definitely couldn’t say _that_ to him either. He’d feel guilty for leaving, and Mermista couldn’t bring herself to use that against him. He’d _had_ to go back home. Camp Bright Moon had been a temporary thing, a summer job he’d taken on a whim, she’d known from the beginning that their time together had an expiration date.

And maybe it was a little silly of her to think it, but she really hoped that their _thing_ , whatever it’d turned out to be, wasn’t another of his whims.

Her phone chimed on the counter and Mermista shook herself. Her book was pages flat on the counter again and she scolded herself for absentmindedly messing up another binding just because she was acting like some yearning romance heroine.

Her finger hovered over the answer button. Speak of the devil.

“What?”

“Dearest, I might have done something unforgivably stupid.”

Mermista rolled her eyes and propped her chin in her palm, resting her arm on the counter. This oughta be good. “Be more specific.”

Sea Hawk took a shuddering breath and for a moment Mermista had a slew of horrible things flash through her head. _he’s dying he cheated on you he wants to break up he’s hurt-_

“I’m in the parking lot.”

Mermista nearly swallowed her tongue. “What?”

“I was apartment hunting again because the place I had been staying had _mice_ and I was thinking about how there really was nothing for me back home and I had been toying around with getting a job here in Etheria and I didn’t want to surprise you with it out of nowhere but then I just started driving and applied to jobs online when I stopped at gas stations and Mermista I’m in the parking lot next to your car, this was very stupid, I-”

“Sea Hawk, breathe!”

He did.

Her heart thudded in her chest and she could hear the blood rushing in her ears. He came back. He came _back._

He ditched whatever was left of his life back home, and came back.

To _her._

What a _moron,_ she loved him so much.

“Mermista,” oh god, his voice was so small. “Please, tell me if you don’t want this.”

What.

The _fuck._

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Sea Hawk-”

“Please, dearest. This was not how I meant to do this. I wanted to talk to you first-”

“Sea Hawk. Shut up. I’m coming outside.”

She stumbled off the rickety old stool, nearly tipping it over as her foot got caught in a rung. Steadying it, and herself, Mermista took a deep breath, and took stock of her day.

The vanilla ice cream was running low.

The soft pretzels were coming up on their best by date.

Sea Hawk had driven across four states without warning and was sitting in the parking lot waiting for her.

She needed to restock the Skittles.

_Sea Hawk had driven across four states without warning and was sitting in the parking lot waiting for her._

She felt like she was moving through water as she tugged on her coat and locked the door, the cheerful “Back in Five!” sign clattering against the window.

Her stomach filled with both anticipation and dread. They swirled around and mixed to become anxiety as she took one step, two steps, three steps towards the parking lot and then.

Something inside her snapped.

Her pride, her anxiety, _something._

Her sneakers slipped and slid on the icy sidewalk, and she nearly ate shit trying to keep her balance on the slick surface, but she managed to keep running. 

_please be true_

His crappy Scottsdale truck, as dingy and broken as it had been when she’d last seen it leaving her, parked next to her sensible little Kia like it had never left. Her heart caught in her throat.

Mermista skittered to a stop at his driver’s side door, catching herself with the door handle.

There he was.

She didn’t care what he had to say as she yanked the door open, grabbing a fistful of his coat. Her lips were on his, and by how cold his were, she had the thought that the heater in his truck must have gone out since the last time she’d seen him. But that didn’t matter just then, only that he was back, and she had missed him, and was he wearing her earrings? She'd been wondering where those had gone.

And he was an idiot but he was _her_ idiot so that made it okay.

They were going to have to have a very serious talk about the consequences of abandoning your life and springing major life changes on your girlfriend without prior warning or discussion, even if you did it by accident, but that was later.

Now, they had lost time to make up for.

**Author's Note:**

> this was kind of a freewriting exercise i did off the cuff this morning that spiraled out of control. anyway i'll probably edit it later bc i'm gonna hate it in about an hour or so 
> 
> ciao


End file.
